Romantic interest on swipe-based dating apps (SBDAs) is highly concentrated. This can frustrate both popular users who feel overwhelmed by a glut of attention, and less popular users who feel dejected by a lack of it. Is the concentration of interest exacerbated by the platform design of dating apps? I provide causal evidence on the effects of two common design features – the emphasis on visual elements in profiles,and limits on the number of profiles users can express interest in – on the concentration of interest (“likes”), and show that both, as implemented under the status quo,concentrate interest. To do so, I design, build, and run my own experimental dating app, which closely resembles conventional SBDAs and allows participants to form real matches. Across three field experiments, over 1,000 participants use the app to makeover 70,000 matching decisions. Under conventional SBDA profile design, I show that visual profile components (i.e., photos and height) dominate matching decisions, and that the concentration of interest is driven mainly by users’ reactions to profile visuals. Simply reducing the salience of visuals on profiles does not significantly affect which profiles receive likes, but requiring users to screen profiles on other components spreads likes more evenly (Gini coefficient decrease of 0.05 points) without reducing their number or the resultant number of matches. Finally, I show that limiting the number of profiles that users can express interest in, which many SBDAs do as part of a freemium subscription model, amplifies concentration (Gini coefficient increase of 0.1 points).

That is from the job market paper of Sofia Shchukina, who is on the job market from the University of Chicago.

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